Cian [00:00:05]:
All right, Office Hours live, episode 141. Welcome back, Gromies. We're returning to our classic Q and A format today. Jason and I are going to deliver a little bit of a blend of a longer format with a couple of questions that we're going to get into, a little bit longer answers on and then a few of our shorter questions that have come in over the last couple of weeks that we're going to round out the day with today, this episode, back to some insights on precision agriculture, strategic facility improvements and some essential pest management, as well as few environmental control techniques, all directed from the excellent questions from the AROYA community. So thanks guys, for sending in the material we used to get the show going. All right, so today's feature topics. We have a quick question from one of our viewers on crop water stress index. Then we're going to get into a question we got in about strategic facility improvement on a budget.

Cian [00:01:05]:
And then the next question we're getting to is referring back to something that Jason and I talked about as a potential pest control strategy, cooking or freezing a room, trying to be able to understand a little bit more of what that actually is about and what you're shooting for when you're doing that as well. We have a couple questions on precision irrigation shot size strategies, P1 versus P2 shot sizing and strategic sensor placement when you only have a handful, if maybe not even just a handful, maybe just one sensor to work with to take your readings. Well, let's jump right into it today. So the first big question we got is from our friend Scott. And Scott has a bit of an interesting question about the relationship between crop water stress index, CWSI for those of you who aren't familiar, and advanced plant monitoring. So Scott's question is essentially a deep dive into using leaf surface temperature versus ambient temperature as a way to identify transpiration quality. And he asked us whether or not AROYA has ever considered using thermal imaging systems to be able to approximate cwsi. So let's start with a definition of what CWSI is.

Cian [00:02:31]:
First off. So it's essentially how the a comparison by the leaf surface temperature to ambient air temperature can indicate the efficiency of your transpiration rates, cooler leaf surface, active transpiration and good health. While a warmer, hotter than ideal leaf surface is going to indicate reduced transpiration and potential issues or stress baseline requirements. You know, the need to identify what is your ideal versus your dry, your.

Jason [00:03:19]:
Too.

Cian [00:03:22]:
Too much trigger pressure and all of a sudden you're as we talk about collapsing those root capillaries, I think there's a bunch of reasons why that hasn't become a little bit more popular. But, Jason, you've got some firsthand experience in kind of what this, the, the question of using thermal imaging to kind of track transpiration rates throughout a room. If you want to start us off and talk about that a little bit.

Jason [00:03:52]:
Yeah. So anyway, we're talking about, you know, obviously, thermals. I was going to give us some, some drawings here, but you're, you, you're way too fast. So. Thermal cameras. Yes, absolutely. I mean, they are very awesome. I've talked so many times in the show about using infrared radiometers, handheld thermal thermal cameras, that type of stuff for, you know, doing instantaneous captures of leaf temperatures, looking at the variation across your canopy.

Jason [00:04:22]:
Right. So when we take a snapshot of, we get to see the uniformity. So we take a snapshot of the camp, we can see the uniformity of the surface temperatures. And obviously, you know, when we talked about under canopy lighting, airflow, plant spacing, we're always trying to help unify what the plant is feeling across all of its leaf surfaces. You know, this is also one of the reasons that whenever we're talking about one of the laser temperature thermometers, it's always a little bit difficult to get a great leaf surface temperature. And when, you know, when we approach this question, yes, leaf surface temperature is the right temperature to be using when optimizing VPD for stomatal conductance or transpiration rates. Right. When we're talking about stomatal conductance, I did get that part of the drawing.

Jason [00:05:11]:
Or talking about stomachs being open as much as possible given some of the conditions, so that we get obviously good transpiration rates. So that's a little HO2 thought bubble. That's actually like transpiration. Not just a thought bubble. The plant's not thinking about transpiring, it is transpiring. And then Obviously we have CO2 going into the plant. So when we think about, all right, if we've optimized our stomatal conductance, we're getting as much carbon into that plant as it can given those parameters. And that's important, obviously, because as a carbon based plant, most plants are carbon based, it is requiring that.

Jason [00:05:52]:
I mean, that's one of the limiting factors. When we look at this stoichiometric equation for photosynthesis, we're talking about CO2 and water catalyzed by light. Right. And so, you know, CO2 being a limiting factor there, the more we can get to the plant, the less likely that it will be the factor in reducing how quickly our plant grows, or not necessarily reducing, but limiting it. We talk about that law of minimums. It, you know, there's always something in the system. Hopefully it's their genetic potential. Right.

Jason [00:06:31]:
That means we're doing a great job for optimizing this plant. If it's not nutrients, if it's not temperature, if it's not light, if it's not CO2, then, then at some point we get to, you know, genetic potential, limiting that. And that's great. That's really. That, that means we're winning. As a grower, I am going all over the place with this question because there, there really is a lot to it. But if we get back to, you know, looking at leaf temperatures using net radiometers or infrared radiometers to look at canopy, it really comes down to, you know, what are you using as the data point from that radiometer?

Cian [00:07:07]:
Right.

Jason [00:07:07]:
So it, it's going to see the same thing as like a thermal camera. Right. A lot of times those net radiometers, they come in, we used to use apogees, but if you use something like that, it has a specific focal point and a lot of times the data point coming out there, if it's given one data point, it's like an average of the temperatures that it sees in that, that, that point. So for example, if we are looking at a single leaf, well, if we have good airflow in there, there's a good chance that that temperature sensor, net radiometer, sorry I used the wrong term there. That radiometer is going to be fluctuating very quickly. Right. As that leaf flutters in front of the field of view of that radiometer, those temperatures are going to bounce around probably, you know, early in the cycle, probably between say, you know, 78 and 85 depending on our light and stuff. And that's, that's really where if you take a picture, you know, once, I like take lots of pictures with thermal cameras, but if you take a picture once with a thermal camera, you'll get to see that, hey, we have enough spatial variation in that leaf surface temperature that it may or may not be a more difficult number to, to use and to, to master.

Jason [00:08:31]:
Right. And that's why it is great to have good airflow under canopy. Lights are nice and be looking at what is the consistency of it. Right. You know, anytime that we have, you know, top, top lighting, specifically, you know, especially HPS lights, we're going to see hotter leaf temps right at the top. And that gradient may be 5 degrees. It may Be probably even more than that. In a case where we only have top lighting, in the case where we have really good airflo, good plant spacing and some under canopy lighting, you know, hopefully we're reducing that gradient.

Jason [00:09:10]:
Right. The more that we can get this one plant and, or the canopy of plants that are hopefully alike to grow as similar through the height of the plant, easier it is to optimize those conditions. Right. Because if we take a temperature sample down in the canopy and we try to optimize the VPD for inner canopy temperature leaf sample, a lot of times that our outer canopy and our apical areas are going to be, we're looking at way too high vpd. Right. There's always a microclimate of environment around those leaves because our transpiration, right. Our H2O, so that boundary layer around the leaf is actually causing it to respond slightly different than the actual environment itself. That's why we're talking about this question, right.

Jason [00:10:01]:
When we're talking about leaf surface temp that's right here, it's usually going to be cooler if we're looking at LEDs and a lot of times it'll be a little bit warmer if we're looking at HPSs. It's always going to be more humid to some degree. Right. And how big that boundary layer is is dependent on our, our airflow, our, our, our variables within that canopy, you know, specifically usually height, but also if we have very dense canopies within a bench or really wide benches, for example. So why is this important is because you can't just go directly change leaf vpd. I can't go over to the thermostat on my wall. Hopefully we're not using thermostats, but a lot of people are. Maybe we're using a BMS system.

Jason [00:10:51]:
I can't go over there and say change my leaf VPD to a different set. Now, if we really did a great job optimizing the use and the full feedback of net radiometer, you know, let's say that we were able to capture the average canopy temperature. We pipe that into a BMS system. That's the really cool stuff that I like to do. Right. Let's actually take it the next step and do something where we are using full feedback. So yes, those are very nice types of equipment. However, I can't say that in the hundreds of facilities that I've been in too that anyone's actually at the point of optimizing H Vac parameters based on radiometer.

Jason [00:11:40]:
So what do we do next? What's the biggest influence factor of leaf temp? That's air temp. Right. There are a couple of things in there as well. Radiation that's hitting that leaf surface. What's actually the temperature of the red zone water temp coming in can sometimes drop that leaf temp as well. Yeah. So that's, that's what we do is we work with the air temp and we modulate that in order to actually get the best leaf temp. And if we have something like, you know, your first step, have a snapshot of your thermal camera.

Jason [00:12:16]:
Well, first step, yeah. If you can get a leaf temp with your point and shoot laser thermometer, then you start to know that offset. If you can do it with a thermal camera now, you get to know what that offset is at that point in time in that spatial variation. Now if we use the NET radiometer, then we have an overtime. Right. So what's the leaf surface temperature difference during lights on, during lights ramping up or maybe when we're modulating something else in the environment and with lights off. So you could do some cool stuff there. But for most people, where we're at is using that air temp to dictate leaf surface temperature.

Cian [00:12:59]:
I think one of the other big things I keep thinking about with, you know, why we don't delve too much deeper down the hole of trying to use, you know, calculated leaf surface temperature values across a whole room to steer our equipment a little bit more, is that it's really difficult. Kind of what Jason was saying there, to capture all of what you need in a room for good samples and be able to know that what you're sampling and what you're basing your control system on isn't more of a single snapshot rather than that accumulated time. And it's a lot of data. If you had all of the appropriate cameras placed in for like an IR system to be able to really get time series data like that stacked up, it becomes really burdensome to a from a data standpoint because you, you have a lot of information coming in and you have to sort that. And I would imagine then build some sort of an algorithm that's able to parse that data feed so that you understand that you're getting good averages out of what you're seeing on the cameras. And currently, like Jason said, we use air temp to be able to modulate that leaf surface temp. And not all of us are equipped to be able to have the leaf surface temp be what we're using. As our day to day metric to be able to control.

Cian [00:14:32]:
Because again, our control systems, you know, we're just telling them what to get the air temp to. So we only have so many levers to pull there.

Jason [00:14:42]:
Yeah, keep going. I talked for fucking ever. So I was going to break it down to some more science stuff. So when we think of a 2D measurement, right. So you know, at the least dimensions we'd have a single laser point in an infrared dot that's measuring that temperature on a 2D, like a net radiometer where we would have basically a Gaussian plane for any of the physics nerds out of there. And so when we think about analyzing a three dimensional canopy here, I only got to drawing one substrate, but we'll just imagine the rest of them are there and we'll call that a substrate and make some squigglies. Yeah, so let's give me just a couple more seconds. So when we think about what CN is talking about is how would we capture that information? Well, on a 2D plane, right.

Jason [00:15:43]:
A lot of times we would have, you know, if we thought about it, well, that one camera could be directly above the plants. And sure, what this is going to, this camera is pointed down or these three cameras, however you want to look at it, they're going to capture mostly apical measurements, right? I mean there's going to be direct reflections from the radiation coming off the lights. So those are going to be exaggerated. These temperature numbers are even if you have under canopy, they're going to be much higher than what you would see in the middle of the canopy. Right. So how do we make these assumptions in order to grab that? Well, we could go deploy a couple more net radiometers, right. And we could say, all right, let's grab these temperatures. Right? All right, so now we've got, you know, an angular 45 degree and we're capturing the surface, the edge of the plant.

Jason [00:16:45]:
Depending on how thick our canopy is, you know, at least early on, we're probably going to be getting some pretty good middle to canopy measurements that are averaged out across the top of the canopy as well. Obviously when our canopy gets thick, a lot of this is probably just going to be bouncing off the top before we even get analysis of there. Well, so then what do we do? Do we start adding cameras within the canopy to try and actually get a full capture of the bottom dimension? All right, well now with my tiny diagram here, we've got a lot of net radiometers and we've got a lot of setup in order to actually capture some good data points out of that. So this is where a human as a grower needs to kind of step up and make some discerning, I'm not going to say assumptions because I kind of had that negative connotation with that earlier. But some discerning estimations, some guesstimations as far as what numbers are going to best represent my crop. And I keep bringing it up, but it was a video I did a while ago on YouTube. Look up AROYA sensor density and it talks a little bit about how do we start to attribute the numbers that we're seeing to capture the most of the plant growth when we see under canopy being deployed. A lot of people are saying, hey, I'm getting a lot more a buds, right? Where really what we're doing is unifying the canopy growth there.

Cian [00:18:22]:
Appreciate that. I also think it's good to point out that one of the big things that we're using as a lever to control transpiration as well is is our ability to control and understand our VPD curves like you teach people. You know what I mean? Understanding that overnight transfer or sorry, not VPD curves our transpiration rate overnight. So hour by hour transpiration and just being able to kind of identify your, your transpiration rate through looking at some of these more simple, more available metrics, it allows you to make quicker decisions with a very high degree of accuracy that you don't necessarily need to spe as much time and effort trying to make these decisions. Which I think is ultimately why we have landed in looking at a lot of the metrics that we use to quickly assess these crops and make decisions on whether or not we have an ideal transpiration rate, because we can approximate those in ways that are accurate enough to be able to make good decisions quickly that allow us to respond to changes in real time. And unfortunately, the technology of the day currently is such that an adoption of a thermal imaging system to be able to make these types of decisions in real time just isn't quite affordable for most places. And I mean, the illustration Jason made there was a perfect example of just how much you're going to have to invest into a system like that to be able to reap the benefits that you'd find with being able to just have really accurate volumetric water content data and understanding the transpiration rate of your plant over time as it's drying back overnight.

Jason [00:20:10]:
Yeah, it's kind of a. I mean, I think there's some human phenomenon in there that when. And this is coming from a tech guy I love technology because. But humans are able to learn, interpret, decipher, and build patterns quite quickly a lot of times, even when we don't realize it. This is one of the things that I loved about being able to spend more time in the garden because I was using sensor just to monitor. The simple stuff is let's use technology to, you know, to capture the stuff that it can to. To take advantage of the simple measurements, the simple decisions in there. You know, do I need to turn a fan on, do I need to turn the heater off to dehumidifier on, whatever.

Jason [00:20:54]:
And then allowed me to go in there and really be kind of on the next level of learning. A lot of us don't even realize that we're learning these things when we're in there. Right. Hey, and how would you document the smell of a plant? Right? Like, okay, we've got. Look at the back of your wine bottle. Chocolate notes, fruity notes. You could never get that into. I'm not going to say never, but it would be very, very difficult at this point to get that into a system that made decisions based on that, making a response based on something like that.

Jason [00:21:25]:
Right. And as a human, we just natively capture that and build it into memories and observations. In other words, a good grower is essentially collecting all of that. And then they're also discerning, you know, some amount of data streams that are coming in to help them make informed decisions on stuff that they probably just shouldn't be spending their time looking at. Like, you know, trying to figure out what my runoff EC is. When I'm sticking a pin in the substrate runoff, I could just have an array system looking at, you know, the fourth dimension of that. All right, we got XYZ dimensions and time. Right.

Jason [00:22:04]:
So we talked about the, you know, the spatial of that net radio radiometer, obviously. Now, the fourth dimension being time, how does that make changes over the plant life cycle? And all of those are important when we're trying to make the absolute most of any crop.

Cian [00:22:20]:
I love it. I think that that, that did exactly what I was hoping. I think I prompted you to jump into the deep end of the scientific pool and the areas that I wasn't quite as well versed in to be able to talk that one through. I hope Scott liked that answer because it was a really interesting thought process once I got that question into, kind of go through like, huh. Well, I guess this is probably why we have decided to settle on the metrics we have and why we're using the tools that we use and rely on. And I appreciate being made to look at that a little bit more closely and, and remember to know that these tools were chosen after trial and error figuring out, you know, what's going to work the best for us to make these quick decisions and to be a reliable tool for us to understand what our plants are doing.

Jason [00:23:18]:
Yeah, I mean don't, don't let me push you the wrong way. They're freaking cool. Like they're super fun to play with. I, I, I was absolutely intrigued by the data that we were capturing, utilizing them. But at some point it's just data, data overload. You know, we have to have that balance of can we just capture this information in a human and hopefully learn about it better? I mean, maybe this goes back to Jonah when we had on here last, like, maybe we need to retain our staff so that there is some knowledge built there as far as, you know, what can we rely on that just instinctually correct with, with a good cultivator. We did, we didn't get into crop water stress index.

Cian [00:24:05]:
We did not. A little, we didn't get quite into crop water stress index here. So to tie that back in, it's a, it's a tool used in more mainstream horticulture to assess a plant status based on its canopy temperature and the surrounding vapor pressure deficit. And it essentially can help determine if a plant is experiencing drought stress or, you know, damage from the application of drought, whether that's intentional or not intentional. And it is helpful in row crops by and large to help manage your irrigation efficiently and help promote good yields. It quantifies the difference between canopy temperature and air temperature, taking into account vpd. Part of why we have settled on using metrics like instantaneous measurements of least surface temperature or a human that is well trained to be able to walk through and identify the VPD that he is wanting the room to be in, not just based on his field, but based on his understanding of the equipment that he's got in the facility and where it needs to be set to achieve the set point that he's really looking for. That can be oftentimes easier to find than someone who's able to understand crop water stress index and its applications on cannabis.

Cian [00:26:04]:
And then kind of what we were talking about before, you'd have to have something that helps you monitor that crop like a thermal imaging system to be able to quantify your, your crop water stress index on a consistent time series basis to be able to start making decisions used. Based on that, I should say that that Track.

Jason [00:26:27]:
Yeah. And this, I mean, it's kind of interesting. Yes. Row crops, looking at crop water stress index, super important. You know, when we get into hydroponics, we have so much more control on, on some of these variables that it may not be, you know, something that we really need to focus on. Typically we're only going to be approaching a, utilizing a water stress index or drought stress index when we're pushing really hard Generative, you know, something like Rockwell is probably not even going to let us get into the water ranges. Well, never mind. It will let you.

Jason [00:27:07]:
We just don't really want to because we're going to destroy a Rockwell and it'd be hard to make the rest of the run. But when we're working in coco, for example, sure. We could bounce off like the 15% water content in that coco and actually be starting to hit matric potentials that are so low, building such a high vacuum, such a high, such a negative pressure that, that we are starting to induce some amount of drought cue to the plant. And kind of going back again to net radiometers since we are talking about lots of sensors, you know, traditional watercourse, there's a ton of different types of sensors in this case, you know, if we were really looking at crop water, crop stress, what crop water stress index, we would probably be wanting to use like a stem psychometer, for example. And that's basically measuring, you know, the amount of pressure. It's measuring tugger pressure across that print. And that's, that's kind of a direct measurement. Right.

Jason [00:28:12]:
So when we think about how are we attributing plant growth, you know, if we're looking at a specific factor in that plant, we want to measurement that represents that plant. And this is kind of where I go back to, well, do I want to want runoff EC or do I want substrate ec? Right. Well, the plant has, doesn't care at all about what your runoff EC is. It's not using that water. It just ran off. And that's why we love in situ root zone ec. That's what the plant feels. Right.

Jason [00:28:39]:
Okay. So if we want to measure stomatal conductance, sure. We can make some inferences about how much humidity we pulled out of the room or you know, any of that type of stuff or you know, assumed vpd, whatever, or you know, we could use a stool model conductance meter. Right. We could actually go in there and do a specific measurement to tell us what the gas exchange is across, you know, those pores and that's where going, you know, Say, if you really want to know what your Tigger pressure is, use a stem psychometer and that will tell you, hey, you know, we, we are seeing a specific response in this, in this, this metric. Does it explain the physiological response to the plant? And one might ask themselves, well, stuff just grows in my basement pretty good. Well, you're probably taking care of it, right? All of these things you're doing anyways that, you know, that works for the plant, you're within a pretty reasonable range. But when we start to grow at really large scales, the more of some of these things that we can validate are within the best ranges for the plant.

Jason [00:29:53]:
Kind of help us become the tip top of the crop. It really helps us grow the absolute best, make the most of our dollar. If there's inputs going into this system that don't pay off because hey, I thought that it helped the plant. Well, why did it help the plant? Did it improve this, you know, this plant response or this plant response to this plant response? Was it just a morphological result that we saw at the end? Were we able to identify the variable that specifically caused that? Or was it a non tracked variable that came along by happenstance? Those are all the other things that.

Cian [00:30:32]:
I run into a lot in that realm is people who will make a change to something. And in efforts of making more money, they make a kind of difficult to understand amount of money that is similar to what they were used to making. So they're not sure if they made really any much more or if they had a crop that was not quite as strong or something that produced a lower yield. And they're sitting there being like, okay, well what might have caused this? And then overlooking that, you know, some other piece of the system wasn't operating at its prime. And great example is, you know, not checking your, your dosatron filters, the little cap that pulls the liquid in. The amount of times I've gone into a facility and seen that, well, why are we having issues pulling the correct dosages from our dosatro electrons? And then you look at the little filter thing and it's three quarters of the way clogged and not very able to pull a consistent amount of liquid through it. Sometimes you start to, you know, build a picture of like, oh, well, there may be other factors in this system that are contributing to the overall health of your, your plants that aren't necessarily having to do with this one thing you added into the system. And unless you start paying more attention to some of those other factors that are going to be predictive of your success in sum total, you may not be able to capitalize on any potential benefit of these additives or these, you know, they're well marketed, you know, solve all your problems type products that you see out there in, in the nutrient and additive games these days.

Cian [00:32:39]:
And I always wonder, you know, could that money and time be better spent solving a logistical problem in your grow that allows you to overcome, you know, clogs on your dosatrons or, you know, a lighting circuit that's been causing you trouble? So.

Jason [00:33:03]:
You know, Dilution Solutions actually has a preventative maintenance schedule and replacement part, well, service parts for those dosatrons.

Cian [00:33:12]:
You know what they also have. Jason is one of the friendliest support staffs that will help you purchase as many of those as you need and get them even overnight shipped to you as I've had them do before when I neglected to purchase enough of them the last time I called.

Jason [00:33:30]:
Yeah, and I was going to say a lot of this is not like really complicated. Like some of this, it's not. I was gonna say rocket science, but I was like, well, some of it's not even plant science. Some of it's just like, okay, well, when we're indoor growing, we have H Vac science, plant science, chemical science, biology, physics. And then we have to manage people and stuff and sales channels and quality, all that type of stuff. Right. And so, yeah, I think some of the best facilities that I have been in, they do a good job making sure the simple things are taken care of and done right on time. And it's, you know, it's like, okay, well, do we want a B? Do we want to be a B plus student and sell a lot, a lot of wheat? Right.

Jason [00:34:21]:
Or do we want to be really awesome at one specific thing and drop the ball a lot somewhere else? Right. Probably the absolute best growers that I've been with aren't in business anymore. They just didn't have the ability to market or get a brand out there. They were so deep in the plant science and stuff. And that's awesome. Just take a little bit different route in life and take advantage of that. But it does bring up. I think we're probably ready for our next question here.

Jason [00:34:52]:
Talking about, go ahead and hit it.

Cian [00:34:59]:
Yeah. The next section of the discussion today was a question about how to maximize the impact of a $20,000 per quarter improvement and maintenance budget for a 20,000 square foot house greenhouse operation. And, you know, it's becoming more and more of a question like, I only have a limited amount of Resources and that's going to get spread across fixing things and potential upgrades at the same time. And maybe it's going to get overshot month to month. D2 how do I maximize my investment in a strategic way to be able to make the most bang for my buck? And where do I focus my triage efforts to be able to make sure that I'm still achieving high quality results while I'm doing that careful math of what I put money into, when, why? And first.

Jason [00:36:03]:
Awesome question. I mean, I think this is probably a question that everybody should be asking regardless of what that budget is. Or maybe it's actually a cut. Maybe it says, hey, I gotta reduce my cost by 20k a quarter in order to stay afloat. Good for this guy that you know that he's got a little extra on top to keep improving. I mean, that's really where you want to be because it's way more fun than putting fires out every day. A holistic audit is really where you're going to want to start. And that is so broad that, I mean, we could just be talking about washing the panels, the roof on your greenhouse more often.

Jason [00:36:44]:
This is where the more data points or the more observations that you can capture that are completely objective, the better that you can make these decisions. Right. You know, and it kind of comes down to maybe you need a third party to come get in that, come do that audit. For me, that's probably never been the best approach simply because no one knows your greenhouse better than you do, most likely unless you've only been there a little while or you just purchased it or whatever. But you know, if it's an operation that you've been invested in for some time, no one knows it better than you do. Right. So if you can, you know, be able to get maybe a little bit more time, boots on ground, taking some measurements, getting some thermal imaging. And like I was a lot of times in the greenhouse, I was accidentally auditing stuff like I have my thermal camera out, be looking at plants, you know, trying to answer the first question of this episode.

Jason [00:37:43]:
Well, what's my, what's my leaf surface temp? And then I'd like to, hey, look at that. Fan motor is really hot. It's actually wired to 110 instead of 220. That's a super cheap, awesome improvement. And those are the things you want to find, right? And I guess maybe I'm not the right person to say where do you start with a full facility audit, but I think where you really should start is Preventative maintenance. If none of that investment is going to preventative maintenance, then that's a really good place to start. Because when less things are broken, it's way easier to identify things that do need improvement. And I guess we'll just jump back into another anecdote.

Jason [00:38:31]:
I used to look at my environmental charts every single morning from the 20,000 square foot greenhouses. It was four bays and one morning I was like, like, something's wrong with bay four. And I couldn't, you know, I looked over engagement profiles of or duty cycles of equipment operating in there and like things were looking okay. But I went in the greenhouse and the gable exhaust fan motor hadn't been bolted very well and it actually fell through the blackout and it was just hanging out on the floor in the greenhouse. It's like, all right, well, I probably could have just walked in the greenhouse and known that better, but I didn't know necessarily to be in that greenhouse looking at some specific problem in there without taking a step back and saying, here's an objective analysis of performance across the board with this site.

Cian [00:39:34]:
Oh, it's, it's one of those things that it really depends on what your facility has going for it too. Right. I think you go in and you talk to anyone that has been running their facility for an a good while. They oftentimes will have their fingers on the pulse of whatever their biggest stumbling block is. And greenhouses, oftentimes, I find that one of their biggest issues and one of the hardest things that they face is the combination of keeping enough CO2 in there while they're maintaining climate control. And that's going to be one of the places to try and spend a lot of time paying attention to how your greenhouse heats up when you get to that point where you have to vent it and what you can do to prolong the period of time where you aren't venting the greenhouse so that you are maintaining optimal CO2 levels in there and making sure your plants are at peak efficiency as long as possible throughout the day. And a lot of the places that I visit that are growing in greenhouses, they frequently struggle with that because a lot of them don't have the greatest climate control installed. And there's also a big stratification of climate across a lot of greenhouses, especially when there's, you know, maybe one section that gets a lot of solar intensity and is really in the sun all day long.

Cian [00:41:20]:
And that may be the whole opposite end of the greenhouse from where your wet wall is to be able to pull in Cool air. So there can be a lot of challenges with maintaining that ideal climate inside your greenhouse. And unfortunately, you know, you get too hot. You're really, you're stunting your ability to, to transpire the way that you need to correctly. And it's, it's a tough balancing act. But the more you can pay attention to how you can control that and how you can modulate your climate to make sure that you're not dumping CO2 prematurely, I think that can be one of the biggest places to focus your efforts in terms of what you're going to get in return for that money and that investment.

Jason [00:42:15]:
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I was trying to think here. All right, well, if I want to break it down to where to start, what are our plans responding to, and when we, you know, obviously look at our equation there, CO2 plus water catalyzed by light. I mean. Yeah, that's one of those things in a greenhouse that, that's a huge challenge. I think another thing that I would encourage people is to isolate your problems from your goals. And this might seem a little bit removed from things, but, you know, let's say we do have, you know, some improvement budget. Right. Well, if we have some problems that bother us.

Jason [00:42:58]:
Right. Some problems that, that suck every day, let's maybe just use some of that to fix them. Right. Regardless of whether it's in the direction of actually us achieving our goal, let's just fix those so that life's better. Let's just fix those so we can stay focused. Let's fix those so we can have more time on our goals and then spend some more of that on what our goals are. And for certain producers. Yeah, the top quality crop coming out of a greenhouse.

Jason [00:43:29]:
If we're at 20 acres of greenhouse or 100 acres of greenhouse, top quality is probably not what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to cut some costs. So how do we use that 20k to actually reduce other costs, that type of stuff? Every situation is very, very specific. At 20,000 square foot, hopefully you're relatively craft grower and, you know, probably people. Sometimes you need to invest in your people. Sometimes maybe you need to pay someone more to keep them on staff, to keep a specific position running. Well, Right. Maybe they're your greenhouse manager and they get financial struggles at home and it affects their ability to do their work.

Jason [00:44:18]:
And maybe they could actually just. Just make your greenhouse better every day if they got paid enough more to get a babysitter or get a reliable car or Whatever it is, right? And that's kind of like isolating this promise from that goal is like, let's just knock the problems out so that we're not firefighting on a daily basis.

Cian [00:44:37]:
And I think that that gets to be another point of this whole thing, right? Is like kind of that boots on the ground thing that you're talking about with the facility audit. If you're the one making these decisions, right? If you're the one out there arbiting where this budget's gonna go and you're trying to figure out how do I make the most good for this place, Be intimately involved with what's going on there because, you know, for example, you go spend two weeks in the trenches, day in, day out, hands on with the plants, you will have a very good idea of where you can make the most good and whether that's, you know, with your, with your team by, like Jason said, investing in, you know, some of your human resources there, or whether you need to, you know, invest in making their lives a little bit easier at the facility so that they're able to capitalize on their time and spend it in ways that makes you a little bit more money in the long run. And I see that on a regular basis too, where, you know, like what Jason was talking about there with, like, if there's some small things that are bothering us that we can throw a small portion of this budget at that that maybe aren't in service of our long term goals, but make things more simple, a little easier and take away some sort of basic repetitive task or thing that we were spending energy and time monitoring before. If we can help those teams get to be a little more efficient and spend their time on the things that actually matter, I think that's going to be one of the places you can really make big returns as well. Well, I think from there I wanted to jump into this question we got from Nick March earlier when we were having our discussion about crop water stress index. Nick asks, what do you guys think about PCO and BPI devices like proguard being overused, causing slow ripening due to reduction of ethylene level?

Jason [00:46:38]:
I don't know. Why don't you start with this one, See where we go.

Cian [00:46:43]:
I mean, I don't know that much about Progirt. I know it's been used to ripen fruit. I know that there's been conversations about pcos being used, like UV systems being used to ripen things, but in terms of how well they work or what the physiological mechanisms that they're playing on to actually accomplish that. I, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure. Nick.

Jason [00:47:15]:
Yeah, I'll be honest here. I'm not super familiar with a PCO or what a BPI is, so. Yeah, Progard. Okay, I, I got you there. Ethylene in other crops definitely known to. To ripen things. Is it. Do we want to be prematurely ripening cannabis plant or is, you know, something like Progard reducing the amount of ethylene actually helping us get the most out of the plant? Maybe not as fast.

Jason [00:47:43]:
We're not getting. We're getting that out of there because we're not signaling that plant with a ripening signal. But it kind of comes down to the strain and how quickly do we need it down? Right. We're trying to cut a week off a flower or we trying to make the most of a specific type of flour within the timeframe that it has.

Cian [00:48:03]:
Well, and it's, it's. I don't know, it's just a tough one for my brain to conceptualize because I know that like, the first thing that comes to mind is like, bananas, right? When you set things next to bananas in your kitchen and the off gassing of ethylene helps to ripen the other fruits nearby. And I understand that that's kind of what the application of an ethylene product here is meant to do. So totally what you're touching on there, Jason. I don't necessarily have any. I don't have any clients or anyone I know personally who's been applying ethylene products to be able to specifically ripen on an earlier basis throughout the entire run. That is doing so with the express knowledge that that is the best use of that product. I've definitely seen a couple people experiment with doing things like that.

Cian [00:48:56]:
But how effective they are and to what degree they they helped that crop be a successful crop or be something that was really desirable once it got taken to the brokers. I don't know.

Jason [00:49:17]:
Do some research, we'll say we'll stay touched, see what we figure out on this.

Cian [00:49:20]:
Nick says my plans for slur ripen than expected. Etheling being a vocal, I'm thinking Progrard slowed my crop. So high ethylene helps ripen. Saying progrard is reducing the ethylene levels in production the same way. Huge CO2 can limit ethylene production. That makes a little bit more sense there. That helps to clarify that a little bit. So essentially you're wondering if the application of proguard kind of slowed your ripening and prolonged your run Essentially, and I mean, if I understand what you're saying there.

Cian [00:50:00]:
Yeah, that very well could potentially limit the speed that you're actually ripening your plant. Well, to be honest, I don't know many people trying to limit the speed that they're ripening their plants, I think is kind of the name of the game most of the time in commercial these days just because they're always trying to hit that 63 day window with most of their strains every once in a while. You talk to some people that have the luxury of running longer ripening windows for certain cultivars getting up into 70 and 80 days, but it's getting more and more rare these days that you find people that agree that a, you know, 70 or an 80 day cultivar is going to be a commercially viable one.

Jason [00:50:53]:
You're working with people that 80 day cycles.

Cian [00:50:58]:
Outside of outdoor.

Jason [00:50:59]:
No. Yeah. I mean, I did run into a guy the other day that was running some, some legacy strains back in the 70, 70 day mark and I was pretty happy to be working with him. I was like, yeah, I mean, sure, it's fun to push this stuff as hard as we can. And everyone's smile. It's just nice to be able to have some marketing niche cut out. The strain is desirable enough to run it full term.

Cian [00:51:32]:
Interesting. Nick said his crop was expected at 63 days, but ended up having to go more towards 70 days to be able to finish it out on that run. And I mean, if you're applying more program than you were expecting.

Jason [00:51:49]:
Oh.

Cian [00:51:50]:
He said he still runs sometimes up to 84 days, sometimes on, on ESCD or. Sorry, ECSD 84. Man, I, I don't think I could get away with the, get away with that in most of my runs these days. Mostly just because the, the vast majority of the cultivars that I run all are finishing on that shorter end of the spectrum. And then I've got logistical challenges trying to figure out, you know, how to keep that one running for those extra, you know, 20 days. East Coast Sour Diesel. Yeah, those Sour Diesel fans, man. Well, let's get into our next question here to round out the end of the day.

Cian [00:52:49]:
Just had one other one that came in about what we were talking about when we talked about cooking or freezing a room.

Jason [00:52:59]:
I like this one. Yeah, it'll kill pests, that's for sure. You know, definitely some things to be careful of is how far do we push it and how long do we push it for? You know, I personally, I was pretty happy if we're up over 100 degrees for five hours. Six hours in a greenhouse, sure. If I can hit 120 for a while, that's awesome. You know, the chances of defending of, you know, decreasing the number of bugs or defending against, you know, some type of, some of that stuff in there, the pests. It was very helpful, especially like this time of season up here in the Palouse. We were getting invaded with bugs coming out of the harvest, like the neighbor's wheat harvest, you know what I'm saying? Not like the actual bud itself.

Jason [00:53:52]:
But yeah, it was a good way to deter from that. Still is. You know, wintertime when we're freezing, definitely a great way to do it. You know, those things don't want to be in there when it's nasty. Just like, you know, you or I don't want to be in there and shouldn't be in there when it's, it's that hot or that cold. Make sure you do take some precautions for your equipment though, right? Like if we're going to freeze the room out too long, let's try to make sure that no pipes are susceptible to rupturing. You know, if we're going to go up over 140 degrees, let's stick our Arroya climate sensor out of there. I think that's what it's spec to is 140.

Jason [00:54:37]:
So yeah, definitely, definitely just keep an eye on how hard are we pushing it and you know, what concerns do we have as far as actually deterring anything other than just the pests?

Cian [00:54:53]:
Well, and the other thing I always like to remind people is if you try to do this with your controller, rather than manually cranking your lights on, you're going to hit auto temp shut off long before you get an ambient room temperature into the 120 range. So worthwhile to remember that one of the things that you're actually doing here is you are manually turning all of your lights on and cutting your climate control equipment so that you're able to reach these temperatures. And that requires you to be active so that when it's time to turn everything back off, you can go in there and do that. And I have a couple times gotten questions from people where they're like, I tried to turn my lights all the way up and it just kept hitting shut off. It's like, well, you have to actually force them on and make sure the system actually is allowing them to stay manually turned on for that duration of time that you're doing that.

Jason [00:56:01]:
And if you do, if you're using a chemical fogger in the room actually a great time to do that as well. Anytime that we're combining those types of stuff, stuff. Any pests are going to be more susceptible when they are in a less desirable environment. And so if, you know, if we're at 120 degrees and, you know, we've got some chlorination in the air, those things are. They're going to either evacuate or die.

Cian [00:56:29]:
That's a good point, Jason. I always usually try to double those at the same time. And, you know, I never actually thought about how that might be doubly as effective. But it was always for me, just time consideration. Right. I'm going to leave the room for six hours anywhere at this point. So I might as well release my chlorine dioxide while I'm cooking the room as well. And so that was always happy accident, I guess, on my end.

Cian [00:57:00]:
Well, I hope that answers a couple of those. The big question on that is really like, what am I trying to achieve here? You're trying to hit an ambient temperature above 100 degrees. If you can hit 120 for, you know, four to six hours, great. If you hit 140 or 150, you might start having some adverse consequences to leaving the room in that temperature range for that long. So do be mindful of what's going on in there. And like Jason said, if you're going to push your room up to that high, please unplug your AROYA equipment so that it's not going to get fried.

Jason [00:57:34]:
If you walk in and your irrigation lines are starting to like, like melt, we probably went too often.

Cian [00:57:44]:
Good signal to turn it all off. Well, thank you guys all for joining us today for episode 141 of AROYA Office Hours. It's been a lot of fun jumping back into our traditional strategy of question and answer. And I hope you guys send in some more questions for us to come at you with the next couple episodes. Join us on the next episode. I think we're going to try and do either another question and answer or potentially get some guests back on from one of our running segments. Upcoming topics that I've been kind of thinking about that if you guys have any questions to send in, it'd be awesome to get a few questions from the audience. Advanced environmental control strategies, nutrient management for precision techniques and harvest optimization.

Cian [00:58:39]:
So anyone who has some good questions, keep sending them in. We love getting questions from all of you guys, whether it's on YouTube, whether it's on Instagram, whether it gets sent into a salesroyaa IO. We appreciate all of you guys tuning in every week. And we hope to see you again live this next week on Roy Ops Hours.